Winger flings Big West discus winner
You could say Russ Winger took flight at the Big West Conference track and field championships.
The sophomore from Colorado Springs, Colo., added the discus title Saturday to the shot put crown he won a day earlier and was named the league’s Field Athlete of the Year to highlight Idaho’s goodbye to the Big West.
The Vandals, bound for the Western Athletic Conference next year, finished fourth among men’s teams and seventh among women in the meet in Irvine, Calif., where Cal State Northridge and UC Santa Barbara captured the team titles.
Winger was one of three Vandals who won individual titles on the final day, adding more than 4 feet to his lifetime best with a spin of 188 feet, 9 inches. He was joined on the top step by senior Pat Ray of Spokane, who defended his title in the men’s 200-meter run, and Mary Kamau, who won the women’s 1,500 and came back to set a school record while finishing second in the 800.
“Russ was our big highlight,” said coach Wayne Phipps. “He’s been throwing well all year, but to come out at a conference meet like this and throw as well as he did is amazing. I’m glad the rest of the conference could see that as well.”
Ray, who has battled illness and injury the last month of the season, won the 200 in 21.25 seconds, took seventh in the 100 and ran legs on Idaho’s relay teams, which both finished third.
Kamau ran 4:20.02 to defend her 1,500 title, but just 45 minutes later hooked up in a duel with Cal Poly’s Maggie Vessey, who was competing only in the 800. Vessey pulled away to win in 2:04.78, but Kamau clocked 2:05.96, more than a second less than her school record.
•Robin Mikesh cleared a lifetime best 5-10 and triggered a wave of Washington State points in the high jump to highlight the Cougars’ first day at the Pacific-10 Conference championships at Los Angeles.
Mikesh won on the basis of fewer misses over Oregon’s Lauryn Jordan, while Cougars Julie and Diane Pickler and McKinnon Hansen all cracked the top eight to net WSU 201/2 points. That boosted the Cougars into second place behind Stanford in the women’s competition.
On the men’s side, WSU is bringing up the rear behind first-day leader Oregon – the Cougars hurt by the loss of pole vaulter Tyson Byers, who pulled a hamstring in a meet last month and is not yet ready to compete.
In addition to the high jump, WSU’s other big score came in the women’s javelin. Jenna Dean and Rachel Bertholf moved up from third and sixth in the prelims to finish second and fourth, Dean getting off a best of 168-11 and Bertholf throwing 154-10.
•Behind senior Mike Erickson’s school record leap, Eastern Washington used a 1-2-3 finish in the pole vault to equal its best showing at the Big Sky Conference track and field championships in Flagstaff, Ariz.
Erickson – whose season best had been 15-1 – soared 16-71/4, and teammates Mike Krings and Mike Uhlenkott also topped 16 feet.
The Eagles totaled 105 points for third place behind champion Montana State, while the women were sixth in a competition won by Northern Arizona.
The women had an unexpected champion in sophomore Jamie Griffith, who won the 400 hurdles in 1 minute, 1.20 seconds. Griffith hadn’t run the event until this month; the final was just her fourth race.
Another top performance for the Eagles women was a school-record lead in the triple jump by sophomore Teanna Meinhold. Held out of competition until late April by injury, Meinhold bounded 39-7 to finish third.
•Whitworth’s Aaron Coe and Kristi Dickey won the men’s and women’s 10,000 at the Ken Foreman Invitational in Seattle.
Jason Dixon of Community Colleges of Spokane won the discus.